Climate-impacted communities across Asia are taking their fight to court
When Super Typhoon Rai — equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane — began battering Batasan Island in Bohol, Philippines, in December 2021, Trixy Elle and her husband, two children, and father waded into the storm, fearing they would be trapped in their home. Holding on to one another, they were determined not to let go.
By morning, the house Elle and her husband had spent years building was gone. So was much of the island. They were left with just the clothes on their backs. In the days that followed, the family survived in conditions that stripped life to its barest terms, at one point, eating livestock they had found dead in the storm’s aftermath.
“As a mother, it was up to me to find ways to feed my family,” Elle, a fish vendor, told The Xylom. “It got to …